BILL'S MEMORIES INCLUDE FRIENDS FROM THE ARMY, FAMILY IN THE STATES, FRIENDS FROM CORNELL UNIVERSITY AND THE WORK PLACE, AS WELL AS FRIENDS FROM HIS CHILDHOOD IN ARUBA.  WITH BILL'S PERMISSION, I HAVE EDITED OUT MOST OF THE PEOPLE AND LEFT ONLY THOSE FROM ARUBA.  DAN JENSEN

(ARUBA) NAMES FROM THE PAST

BY

BILL MOYER

SECTION I

NAMES ARE AMAZING.  THEY TRIGGER A FLOOD OF MEMORIES, LIKE TABS ON A FILE DRAWER.  TO RECALL SMELLS, FEELING, IMPRESSIONS, EMOTIONS AND INNUMERABLE OTHER DETAILS, ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS THINK OF A NAME FROM THE PAST.  I GOT TO THINKING ABOUT PEOPLE OR NAMES TUCKED IN MY OWN MEMORY.
Al Jolson was the first “star” I saw in person. The impression was negative. I still don’t like the man, even after hearing some of his great recordings like “Is It True What They Say About Dixie?” His visit to Aruba, though, is more a story of my dog, Whitie. During World War II, we in Aruba had a minor contact with global war. A German submarine (we now know it was the U-156) surfaced one night, torpedoed several oil tankers, setting them ablaze, and shelled the refinery where my father and his two brothers were working on the night shift. We were relieved that the shelling did no serious damage to land structures, including a club house the Company had built for its employees with a movie theater, bowling alley, dining room and other recreational facilities. Not long afterward, however, we lost the club house to fire--cause unknown.
Lago Oil (Esso) couldn’t bring in much construction material because shipping was partially cut off by torpedoing, but they did manage to assemble a structure next to the Colony commissary, by putting four prefabricated army barrack buildings together to form the outer outline of a square. One building on the south side housed a soda fountain, among other things (we had an “all the ice cream you can eat” party to celebrate its opening that I will never forget), the building on the west contained offices and the counter where we purchased paper “club tickets” to use as money in the club, the building on the north housed a long bar and hand-shuffle-board tables. As I recall, the building on the east was used for storage and possibly the public library. In the middle, open area, was our new movie theater. It was equipped with canvas chairs. We sat in the open air and watched a movie shown on a screen mounted on the east inner wall, the picture projected from an elevated booth over the west building. Even in heavy rain, the movies kept going, and diehard viewers (which always included me) held vacated canvas chairs over their heads to keep semi-dry.
The four buildings were mounted on frames that lifted them about three feet above the ground, for circulation, but this area was blocked off by lathwork or latticing (kids still managed to squeeze through occasionally for a free movie, but openings were quickly spotted and repaired.) There was one entrance door to the movie at the southwest corner, and James or Shorty or some other club staff member took tickets.
Whitie was a little “Columbian Spitz” dog my Uncle Claud had bought from a fruit boat that had sailed to Oranjestad from South America. He gave it to me after our first dog, “Blackie”, had died. We gave a lot of thought to choosing clever dog names in our family. Whitie was a great dog but he followed us everywhere and was cagey about it--when we got ready to go a softball game or the movie (we walked, especially during the War when houses were blacked out and car headlights were blackened to prevent lights from shining toward the sea) he was nowhere to be found, but after we had walked a long enough distance not to want to take time to drag or carry the dog back home and lock him up, he would “mysteriously” show up, wagging his tail enthusiastically as if he had just discovered our location after a long search. If we tried to grab him, he would keep just out of range, but he would then follow along and, if James wasn’t really sharp in guarding the movie entrance, Whitie would dart in, disappear again, and then snuggle up next to one of us during the movie. Once he peed on an unsuspecting movie-watcher’s leg, but that is another story.
The American Army sent a detachment of Coast Artillery troops and a squadron of anti-submarine airplanes--A-20A’s and P-39 Air cobras--to guard Aruba after the submarine attack. (First we had Dutch marines, then Scottish Cameron Highlanders, then Americans.) My cousin Paula worked as a secretary on the American base, and we got to go to movies there sometimes, and to see USO shows with live entertainment. The United Service Organization was, of course, intended to elevate troop morale by putting on wholesome entertainments at overseas bases, but they didn’t object to letting us civilians be entertained, too. I loved the shows, and still remember songs like “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” sung enthusiastically by the crowd along with some entertainer up on stage, leading the way. Most of the USO talent was good, and occasionally someone really famous came along. Like Al Jolson. Jolson had seen his better days by the time he came to Aruba, but people pleaded with him to come to our Colony to perform for the U.S. civilians in addition to his show at the Base, which he graciously agreed to do. We went with great expectations, although I, for one, was disappointed at his boastfulness and exaggerated showmanship as he sang songs he had made famous such as “Mammy” and “Sonny Boy.” His voice must have been past its prime, because it wasn’t very impressive.
His greatest problem that night, however, was Whitie. Whitie had decided to follow us to the show again that evening, and had succeeded in slipping between the legs of people entering the theater door, although Dad and I had thrown rocks at him as we proceeded along the road and thought we had deterred him from coming. Whitie had a curious habit of barking a long, husky bark, followed, if encouraged, by mournful howls which he emitted with his nose toward the sky like coyotes do in pictures I’ve seen. Something in Al Jolson’s technique inspired the worst (or the best, perhaps, from Whitie’s perspective) in Whitie. Jolson sang for a while and then Whitie started to bark. Al handled I t well at first, joking: “That must be an Aruban canary!”  The crowd applauded, and Al Jolson beamed. James or some of the other club staff members tried to catch the dog, but he eluded them, dodging among chairs, and they desisted rather than add to the disturbance. My parents and I tried to look nonchalant as if we were wondering whose dog that could be--we certainly didn’t show any sign he might be ours.
Jolson started to sing again, and after a bit, Whitie not only chimed in with renewed barking, but this time he became so inspired he began to give Al a Five Star selection of his best, most mournful howls, muzzle to the sky, just as he would for one of his favorite girlfriends when she was in heat (he used to bay at the moon a lot at times like that.) Jolson bore it as best he could, then lost his aplomb. He stopped and shouted, “Get that goddamn dog out of here!” This time the club staff (again unassisted by noncommittal Moyers) chased Whitie around until they edged him toward the door. They had learned from previous encounters that he was a biter, so they didn’t try to grab him, although one or two of them aimed kicks his way. He eluded the kicks but decided discretion was the better part of valor, and finally ran out the theater door into the night and rejection. By the time we got home, however, he was in high spirits again, and delighted to see us as if we had been on a long trip.
Tommy Tucker (In our Lago Colony Newsletter, I see that he is sometimes referred to as “Sonny Tucker”--his mother did always call him Sonny) was an interesting kid, older than I was, who led a small gang of younger kids. He always seemed to think of interesting things to do, had insightful opinions on unusual things, and told strange stories. For example, he and his family kept marmoset monkeys in a cage in their back yard. You could go back there and watch them, and Tommy took them out and played with them. They were nasty things, as I recall, quick to bite the unwary, but clever in acrobatics. Tommy was interested in medicine and seemed to know a lot about it. For example, he told a story about how a man had been found drowned on a beach somewhere, and people tried artificial respiration and were about to give the man up for dead when a knowing individual stuck his finger up the mans ass, whereupon the supposedly dead man “crapped all over the beach” and--voila!-miraculously recovered. The triggering of this one natural reflex, Tommy Tucker explained, had started the man’s other vital functions going again! That was the sort of arcane knowledge we younger boys marveled at. I still believe the story about the amazing cure for drowning but worry that I might be too squeamish if called upon to treat such an emergency situation on my own. You never knew what Tom was going to do or say. He was brave, too, as he demonstrated on a Boy Scout trip to Palm Beach.
We normally went for Boy Scout outings to beaches on the rugged, rough side of the island, like Boca Prins or Fontein. One time, though, we went all the way out to Palm Beach. This must have been soon after the War--maybe 1946--because Palm Beach was an almost deserted area. All the beaches on Aruba were public property, so you could walk along the shore anywhere, or swim, but the adjoining area of sand going inland could be private. Most of Palm Beach was blocked off from public roads in those days by tall fences of cactus, with private roads leading down to clubhouses along the water, the entrances blocked by locked gates. On one occasion, our scout leader or someone had arranged for us to use the facilities of one of the clubs--perhaps the Dutch Police Club--so we were driven in past the cactus and thus allowed access to the whole sweep of the beach. We were having a good time exploring, and swimming a bit in the shallow water, when someone noticed a big shark fin protruding from the water offshore. It was pretty far away--perhaps 100 yards--so not an immediate threat, but naturally we watched it nervously as we swam, always ready to retreat if it approached us. Strangely, however, it seemed to remain almost in one place, just moving with the waves. Then Tommy Tucker said he would do something about it.
He clenched a knife in his teeth, just as Tarzan did in the movies, and began to swim out to the shark, with strong, steady kick and strokes. Tom was an excellent swimmer, but I had never realized before that he had this much courage. We all edged back out of the water and watched to see what would happen. Tom didn’t flinch--just kept swimming steadily. Then he began thrashing around the shark, lifting his arm up and down to stab it, throwing his feet out of the water and, altogether, putting on quite a show. By then it dawned on us, however, that the action was all one-sided, and the “fin” was protruding too far from the water as Tom began to tug it toward shore. It soon became evident that our ‘shark” was a big branch or frond from a coconut palm! The broad base had been protruding from the water, displaying a triangular shape.
Did you ever know anyone who could fold his eyelids in half? Tommy Tucker did that. He took the bottom of the lids, holding on to the lashes, and folded them upward so that only half a lid was left. The exposed part was normally the inside of the lid, of course, so it was pink, and looked ghastly. Below the lid was the bottom half of his eyeball, showing only white. Ugh! It got a great reaction of disgust from the other kids, inspiring Tom to walk like the Frankenstein monster and hold his arms out stiffly in front, grabbing anyone he could. He was quite a showman.
Tom Tucker didn’t like me much. He was civil to me, but no more than that. He was older than I, and tough, so I was a little apprehensive. The only time it every amounted to anything, though, was when I was learning to drive. After World War II there was a big shortage of cars in the U.S., and even more so in Aruba. On our vacation in about 1947 Mother, Dad and I spent a few days as usual in New York City, and while there we looked for a car. The only new ones in supply were Kaisers and Frazers, built by Henry J. Kaiser, who had grown rich during World War II making “Liberty Ships” (freighters) out of reinforced concrete! The Kaiser was the less expensive, as I recall, the Frazer more luxurious. One place we looked, however, had not only new Kaiser-Frazers but also a few used cars including a Dusenberg that made my eyes pop, and a green Cadillac Fleetwood that also seemed spectacular but was more affordable. Much to my delight, Mother and Dad decided to splurge and buy the Cadillac! The law in Aruba was fairly relaxed about minimal driving ages, and it wasn’t long before my folks taught me to drive and even began to let me drive on my own (at age 1 4) although I had to be especially careful, not having a license. That didn’t stop me from taking friends for drives in the evenings, and giving rides to girls, although I was a relatively careful driver.
Anyway, one night I was driving along with four or five others in the car--maybe Gleb Aulow, Bob Drew, Polly Mingus and others, although I don’t remember for sure. The thing I do remember is that, as we were driving along just north of the softball field at the “Junior Esso Club”, a car full of rowdy, older boys pulled up alongside and hurled taunting remarks at us. The Cadillac was powerful, and I lazed along, preparing to zip ahead and surprise them when they got too close. The right time came, and I stomped on the accelerator, kicking the car into passing gear, and it roared off. As we started, though, I got a strange sensation of something going on close to my left ear, followed by a bumping sound and shouts as we left the other car in our dust and it fell out of sight in the rear view mirror.
There was a party that night at Betty Ann Binion’s house or maybe Murray Jennings’. We snuck around a while to see if the car of older boys was still looking for us, and made clever maneuvers like going around the block with the headlights off and without touching the brakes because that would have turned on the rear brake lights (did I say something about being a “careful” driver? well, there’s careful and there’s careful), but when they didn’t appear, we stopped at the party. Once inside, I noticed Tommy Tucker standing near me, looking at me with a strange expression. He was all scratched up. I wondered why. Later someone explained that Tom had been in the back seat of the other car (Roy Burbage’s, I think) and, for some unexplainable reason, decided at the last minute to throw a proper scare into us by extending himself through the front window of the car in which he was riding, to grab me by the neck. He surmised correctly--it would have scared the Hell out of me. The only problem was, his outstretched hands were just inches from my neck when the Caddy took off, causing him to catch the window framing instead of me, with the result that he was pulled out of his slower-moving car like a champagne cork popping out of a bottle, stretched out horizontally , and then, when he managed to let go with his hands, his body bounced off the rear side of my car, ricocheted off the other car, and ended up on the ground. It was a miracle that he wasn’t hurt worse. Why he didn’t retaliate by hitting me the first chance he got, I never knew. He may have been too badly bruised, or just embarrassed.
Tommy Tucker was also the one who discovered the old shipwreck in the channel into San Nicholaas Harbor. Who else would have thought to look there, or to swim there at all? The harbor at San Nicholaas (at the western end of the Big Lagoon, but partly blocked by reef on which a lighthouse had been constructed to guide ships) had been created for tanker loading by the Company, which used dredges to deepen that end of the lagoon and dig a channel through the barrier reef into the ocean. Big ships passed back and forth through the channel and it was “off limits” to small boats. Other than that, the harbor was dirty with sewage, with oil spilling from ballasts of tankers and from the loading pipes, and since ships dumped garbage there, there was also, I supposed, more than the usual danger that sharks would be attracted for scavenging. So I never thought of spear-fishing or snorkel-diving any where near that area. The one time I caught a barracuda just east (upwind and up-current) from that area by trolling from a boat with bait, and cooked it for dinner, the fish tasted oily, so that was just one more reason to look elsewhere for interesting things to do. But not for Tom. He looked everywhere.
Right after I left Aruba to go to college, Tom Tucker and other divers ventured into the area of the reef offshore from the lighthouse, where the channel entered San Nicolas harbor. They found an ancient wreck lying on the bottom. The next time I came home to visit, the Aruba Esso News was filled with pictures of Tom and a large cast-iron (or bronze?) cannon he and others managed to bring up from the wreck. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to read some day that Tom has gone back there with a full expedition and uncovered gold or other riches. He is the kind of adventuresome spirit who could do it.
Captain Bailey. After the submarine attack on Aruba, my parents thought it would be a good idea for my mother and me to retreat to Missouri, she to help her father operate his newspaper after his linotype operator had been drafted, and I to attend the Missouri Military Academy at Mexico, Missouri (near Columbia, west of St. Louis.) The school looked nice in the catalog, but it was Hell. Those uniforms looked pretty, but felt stiff and uncomfortable to a nine-year old boy. We drilled one hour every midday, did one hour of calisthenics every afternoon, and in between stood inspection, cleaned up the building, and were fussed at for not folding our bedclothes just right or hanging the clothes in our closet just so. The best part of the day, in fact, was class. The school was a good one, and the curriculum more varied than what I was used to in Miss Olson’s 4th grade in Aruba. The teachers were all men, and some were rather stern in their military uniforms. By comparison, Miss Olson was young and pretty. I liked her better, and was delighted to go back to Lago Colony after one year.
Fairly early in the year, I fell, while running for a base in a game of “hide and seek”, and broke my left arm at the elbow. What a disgrace--to break you arm playing “hide and seek”! It probably was another reason I didn’t like military school, because my activity was even more limited than usual after the break. The arm was in a cast for a while, and when it came out, remained in a bent position. I couldn’t straighten it at the elbow. That’s when Captain Bailey took over. He was one of our school officers, although I don’t remember what he taught. He made me a brick with a rope handle, though, to carry around campus and on our daily marches, so that it gradually straightened out my arm. To make the situation more bearable, he wrapped the brick in brown paper and wrote things on it. “This little brick works like a charm, to help me straighten out my arm. If I don’t tote this brick about, Captain Bailey will bawl me out!” was the main message. I think it also said “Irish Confetti”. People were always stopping to read my brick, and his bright solution made me proud to carry it instead of being ashamed. My arm recovered fully, and straightly, thanks to Captain Bailey.
Tom Eastman: “Mr. Hydroponics.” Some time in the late 1940’s a young agricultural scientist named Tom Eastman persuaded Standard Oil of New Jersey to let him try raising fresh vegetables for the workers at Esso’s desert-island refinery at Aruba. He brought his wife and little daughter, and built a series of concrete beds, lined with tar, and enclosed within a greenhouse. In a small office next door, he stored his chemicals, including potassium nitrate, sulphur, and charcoal, plus a number of others. He blended these with water, and every day ran the solution into the beds, in which he grew green peppers, lettuce, turnip greens, and tomatoes. The Eastmans lived about a block away from our house, in a house on top of a small cliff line, and our family got to know them fairly well. They paid me to baby-sit for their infant one New Year’s Eve, I believe, and I remember a chrome-plated 50caliber shell, complete with bullet head, that they had as a souvenir. It had holes drilled in its side where the powder had been let out. I was fascinated by bullets at that age.
My Dad, who grew up on a farm and always loved farming (he even raised chickens along a windy cliff in Aruba in the 1940’s), volunteered to engage in hydroponics gardening with the help of the young scientist. Dad built a raised (about three feet off the ground, standing on stilts) bed of wood, lined with tar and gravel to hold water. It had a drain plug at one end, just as did the larger hydroponics garden the Company owned nearby. Tom Eastman gave Dad chemicals free, and we mixed a solution each week in an old 50-gallon oil drum Dad turned on its side, braced between concrete blocks, to be filled via a cut in the upside and drained from a spigot at the end. Every day we filled several buckets and poured solution in our gravel beds, and grew fresh vegetables. Big Boy tomatoes, and Firesteels. They were wonderful, and of course much superior to anything that we could get shipped from the U.S. by tanker or by sailboat from South America.
A fringe benefit for me, as a curious kid, was that I could take saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal, and make gunpowder, which I did. Never in big quantities, because my chemical supply was modest, but I tried all sorts of firecrackers. They weren’t packed tightly enough to explode (not that I would have minded their exploding, if on cue, but I didn’t learn how to pack the powder tightly, and was cautious enough not to tamp it hard), but they made a beautiful hiss and a great cloud of smoke that gave me and my friends many hours of forbidden pleasure. We set them off all over. Even under the Junior Esso Club on one occasion, which was really stupid, because of the fire hazard, and which got me a sharp rebuke from James, the white-haired old black man who operated the club for us kids. I had to admit James was right. The club building was made of wood and stood on cement oil-pots intended to keep bugs out. It could easily have been set afire.
The craziest thing we kids did, however, was steal small quantities of gasoline from a tank stored outside the hydroponics garden, to power the pump motors inside. We put the gasoline in bottles, stuffed the tops with oily rags, lit the rag-fuses with matches, and then threw the “Molotov Cocktails” to get a really dramatic effect of bursting flame. Not exactly an explosion, but close enough. We threw them up against a cliff for safety reasons, but one time I almost got badly burned. Just as I raised my throwing arm over my shoulder, the fuse blazing and the bottle full of gasoline, the fuse (rag) fell out and the flaming gasoline ran all over my right arm and side. Fortunately, I was able to pat the fire out quickly and deliberately, and was saved from injury. It just scared the hell out of me. Not enough to make me smart, though.
A few days later, we discovered we could get a more impressive blaze by throwing the Cocktails inside a nearby cave. It was really exciting, in the dark, to see the flames flash out all over. One time, though, I threw the bottle, it burst, but the rag went out while still in the air, so there was no fire. What does a boy do in such a situation? He throws matches where the bottle landed, so as to not waste the explosion! In this case, when the flash came, it came right at me, because part of the gasoline had run along the cave floor to where I was standing! I turned, ran, and forgot there were stalactites in the neighborhood, getting a good braining as a reminder. I guess we finally figured out this wasn’t such a smart thing to do, because we gave up making Molotov Cocktails--or maybe the manager of the hydroponics farm discovered his loss of gasoline and put a lock on the tank.

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